postfix trying to use root to log onto mysql

I've been trying to set up a mail server on a rackspace CentOS 6 cloud server for the past couple days. I've followed your tutorial to a tee with the exception that I didn't compile a new postfix with quota as I don't need a quota system.

Everything seemed to install perfectly, I did have to install some extra packages that weren't listed. But everything seemed to go well.

The issue I'm having is that I'm not able to send any mail (I haven't even tried receiving yet..). After looking at the maillog I can see that postfix gives me the error:

So, I'm guessing that postfix isn't using the .cf files I created with the proper user and password. I've triple checked all the files. The permissions are set properly, the vmail user is correct, mysql lets me log in with the mailadmin user and password, the aliases are set as you've listed, I can telnet to the smtp post and the pop3 port...

I've created a user called mailadmin and granted the proper privileges to the mail database. Just did a full check on the users privileges and logged in as that user and performed some basic SELECT queries and was successful.

I decided to revisit the section about aliases and noticed that I had set the two recommended settings to something else when I was trying to figure out the original problem. I've re-edited the aliases file setting the mailer-daemon to postfix and the postmaster to root and root to my user. I ran newaliases and restarted postfix and now I'm seeing the original error where postfix is trying to log in to mysql with my root user....

the only thing i can think of is that you messed up one of the /etc/postfix/mysql-* files
you should double/triple check and see if in all your files you've setted up the correct mysql credentials/database

it will create a loop and mail that your are sending to the localdomain (domain hosted on the box) won't be sent and as a result using mailx to send a wellcome message and create the maildir for the user will not work and you'll get an error on the webmail login